Guild Wars Preview at GameSpot

Based on a demo, an informative look at ArenaNet's online-only mission-based RPG announced earlier today.

By IGN Staff

A preview of Guild Wars is available for you to peruse tonight. It offers a good deal of information about the title including this bit on some of the team's goals:

With Guild Wars, ArenaNet's developers hope to address what they feel is a big problem in today's online RPGs--specifically, that competitive play doesn't reward skill as much as it rewards the players who have put the most time into the game. ArenaNet intends to design Guild Wars so that characters will get more powerful with time and experience, but the pace at which players become stronger will trail off over time. The game's combat system is designed such that higher-level characters can use a wider range of tactics than lower-level characters, but they won't necessarily be more powerful in every situation. This places a greater emphasis on skillful, creative play. Guild Wars' combat skills system is also specifically designed to encourage you to cooperate with other players and figure out how to combine your unique skills in order to overcome nonplayer character (NPC) monsters and other teams of players.

Characters in Guild Wars will be persistent, but the environments will not. The game will be published by NCsoft, which is the parent of developer ArenaNet. - Jonric